Success requires planning, focus and patience.

Patience is often the most difficult part of this formula. Success requires doing the things we need to do to get where we want to go. Success requires getting things done. The most difficult part of this process is the ability to be patient long enough to continue the effort required to achieve our goal.

There is something very powerful that results from our ability to be patient and focus on the outcome. It helps our clients feel good about themselves and the effort they are making to achieve their goals. It keeps us centered and focused and gives us the fortitude to be patient long enough to achieve success.

I recently heard a speaker tell a story that I had been told many years ago. It is the story of a man who found and hung a painting of a small row boat. It was a painting of a row boat beached in the sand. The boat’s oars were lying at each side of the boat in the sand. A visitor saw the painting and was startled by how sad and bleak it looked. He was about to ask the man why he would hang a painting with such a dark image when he looked down at the bottom of the painting and read the painting’s title “And the tide will always return.” What this means is that you have the ability to focus on the outcome, work hard with an optimistic attitude and be patient while working for good results that will deliver success.

When Jerry Seinfeld was asked the question, “Why do you think you have had so much more success when there are so many very funny comedians out there?” He replied (and I am paraphrasing this), “There is always a long line of very talented comedians standing off stage waiting for their turn. Many of them are probably better and funnier than me. It takes a long time to practice in front of an audience and perfect our craft. Sometimes it’s brutal when the joke doesn’t make it and an audience can be very tough. I just stood in line long enough. One at a time others who were standing in line would become discouraged and drop out, but I stayed in line. Every time someone dropped out I took another step forward and moved up in line. I stayed in line until finally I was at the front of the line. I had succeeded.”

Ty Murray, the champion rodeo star and professional bull rider, has said that “You’re never really ready. It’s just your turn.” The key is to develop the focus and the patience to earn our turn.

In just a few short minutes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his immortal poem, “A Psalm of Life”. He summed it well in the last stanza,

Let us, then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

Reach out and take your turn…